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This article’s details are good, but I found the argumentative route misleading: the specific example they chose wouldn’t have been improved by bid-design, sinc

This article’s details are good, but I found the argumentative route misleading: the specific example they chose wouldn’t have been improved by bid-design, since the whole problem with NYC’s gas and steam networks is that they’re (1) undocumented, (2) critical infrastructure that can’t be disrupted, and (3) regularly responsible for mass casualty events when the city doesn’t gingerly fix them via independent projects. (1), importantly, means that the city doesn’t even know who else to bring to the table until they break ground and see what’s below the streets. The area they chose to highlight typifies this: that part of the East Side uses the steam network for hospital disinfection, and had a massive, deadly, costly stream explosion within living memory[1]. The city absolutely does need better contracting processes. But the parks, MTA, public housing, schools, etc. are all better examples than the one they chose. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_York_City_steam_explo...

flerchin 2y ago
Undocumented infra is the root of all my problems too.
maxwell 2y ago
Historically the way to deal with legacy urban design like this was to, you know, build new cities. Alas, we stopped founding new cities over a hundred years ago in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas_by_year_of_foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas...
- bluGill 2y ago
  Huh? When has someone built a new city? Nearly all attempts fail long term. Cities are located where they are for geographical reasons first and foremost, and so nearly all attempts fail. Where a new city did work it is either because it was a suburb of an existing city; or it has a good geographical reason to exist. The only cases I'm aware of where a city has moved is when the river it was one moved and so the people who lived there followed. Note that politics will sometimes create a city for a short time, but the city rarely sticks. Eventually a new king/dictator/government will come along that doesn't see a need to support the new city and it dies (usually to a farming village since those are needed all over, but in places where there are no farms they can disappear)
  - maxwell 2y ago
    Only seeing hand waving, not a single number. Lots of cities were founded in the Americas over the past 10k years. No major cities have been incorporated in the U.S. since Anchorage in 1914 and Vegas in 1911. On the other hand, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas, Paraguay, Brazil, and Belize have founded major cities since then. Why not in the U.S.? Cancun was founded in 1970!
    - bluGill 2y ago
      Again, you can explain those newer cities by either politics (meaning I question how long they will last - though short of a medical breakthrough we will all be dead before we can see their death), or there are geographical reasons for a city to exist there. New York city has to exist there as a city - you can change the name, but the harbor is to useful to ignore.
      - maxwell 2y ago
        But New York Harbor no longer has any cargo ports. Shipping shifted to Newark Bay decades ago. Same with San Francisco. No longer any cargo ports. They're all in Oakland now. And what's even the advantage of living near a cargo port in the 21st century anyway?
        woodruffw 2y ago
        There are at least two active cargo ports in the New York Harbor: the Port Jersey Marine Terminal in NJ, and the Red Hook Marine Terminal in Brooklyn. I believe the city has also been slowly reactivating the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. I don't know if the average resident on NYC benefits much from living near a cargo port. But there are significant benefits to living in coastal areas: water has a moderating effect on climate, provides either natural sewage outfall (or fresh water, depending), and brings in tourists. It's not a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of cities exist on sea or lake coasts, followed by navigable rivers, and that there aren't all that many choice locations left.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Why would a new city preclude maintaining our existing ones? I don't necessarily disagree about building new cities, but I don't understand how that would solve the problem here: NYC is still the financial and entertainment capital of the world, and it's not like we can just let it decay. People live and stay here for a reason.
  - maxwell 2y ago
    What if the infrastructure is (economically) unmaintainable? Ancient Rome had a million people at the turn of the 1st century and was the financial and entertainment capital of the world too. People lived and stayed there too, until they didn't. How many steam systems are left in the U.S. (outside college campuses)?
    - woodruffw 2y ago
      I don't think comparing Ancient Rome with NYC makes for a serious comparison, except in the broadest strokes. As for the steam system: it's an integral part of Manhattan's residential and commercial heating system. My understanding is that it pays for itself in charges to apartment buildings and businesses (including hospitals as mentioned), so there's no current question around its financial sustainability.
      - maxwell 2y ago
        Comparing cities doesn't makes for a serious comparison...? It sounds like the steam system is important because it's important? Do you have any numbers beyond idioms and anecdotes? At what point in the maintenance curve will the steam system become unprofitable? And to be clear, I love the NYC steam system, but for romantic reasons, not economic.
        woodruffw 2y ago
        > Comparing cities doesn't makes for a serious comparison...? No; comparing antiquity Rome (a city whose collapse is a subject of ongoing historical debate) to NYC (a city that was built 2600 years later) does not make for a serious comparison. Better comparisons would be present-day Tokyo, London, Moscow, Paris, etc. These cities have similar infrastructural problems that they've been able to solve in ways that NYC hasn't, sometimes for political or historical reasons (e.g. being bombed so thoroughly that building new infrastructure is the only reasonable option). > And to be clear, I love the NYC steam system, but for romantic reasons, not economic. I don't love it, or hate it. I recognize that it's a piece of infrastructure, and that infrastructure comes with assumptions. You can either pay to maintain those assumptions, or pay to upend them. Either way, you pay. With NYC paying to maintain them is frequently optimal, since upending them requires revisiting other, even more costly assumptions. For NYC's steam system, concretely: there's been no real public noise from ConEd about the system's unmaintainability or unsustainability. They recently agreed to a new rate/fee schedule with the state PSC[1], on which I can find no significant controversial reporting. Edit: to make it more clear: ConEd's steam network provides heating and industrial steam to around 1500 buildings in Manhattan. That's 1500 buildings, most of which are near or over a century old, that would need to have steam boilers retrofitted into their basements (or have their entire steam plumbing ripped out and replaced with something else). That's a lot of time and money in already one of the world's most expensive labor markets. [1]: https://dps.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/11/pr23116.pdf https://dps.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/11/pr23116.pd...
alexpotato 2y ago
> is that they’re (1) undocumented As a sibling poster mentioned, undocumented infra is horrible. I wrote a thread on how to improve documentation in general if people are interested: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224309861304938496.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224309861304938496.html It's from the perspective of FinTech SRE but I tried to make it general for folks in other industries.

flerchin 2y ago

Undocumented infra is the root of all my problems too.

maxwell 2y ago

Historically the way to deal with legacy urban design like this was to, you know, build new cities. Alas, we stopped founding new cities over a hundred years ago in the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas_by_year_of_foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_Americas...

bluGill 2y ago
Huh? When has someone built a new city? Nearly all attempts fail long term. Cities are located where they are for geographical reasons first and foremost, and so nearly all attempts fail. Where a new city did work it is either because it was a suburb of an existing city; or it has a good geographical reason to exist. The only cases I'm aware of where a city has moved is when the river it was one moved and so the people who lived there followed. Note that politics will sometimes create a city for a short time, but the city rarely sticks. Eventually a new king/dictator/government will come along that doesn't see a need to support the new city and it dies (usually to a farming village since those are needed all over, but in places where there are no farms they can disappear)
- maxwell 2y ago
  Only seeing hand waving, not a single number. Lots of cities were founded in the Americas over the past 10k years. No major cities have been incorporated in the U.S. since Anchorage in 1914 and Vegas in 1911. On the other hand, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas, Paraguay, Brazil, and Belize have founded major cities since then. Why not in the U.S.? Cancun was founded in 1970!
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Again, you can explain those newer cities by either politics (meaning I question how long they will last - though short of a medical breakthrough we will all be dead before we can see their death), or there are geographical reasons for a city to exist there. New York city has to exist there as a city - you can change the name, but the harbor is to useful to ignore.
    - maxwell 2y ago
      But New York Harbor no longer has any cargo ports. Shipping shifted to Newark Bay decades ago. Same with San Francisco. No longer any cargo ports. They're all in Oakland now. And what's even the advantage of living near a cargo port in the 21st century anyway?
      - woodruffw 2y ago
        There are at least two active cargo ports in the New York Harbor: the Port Jersey Marine Terminal in NJ, and the Red Hook Marine Terminal in Brooklyn. I believe the city has also been slowly reactivating the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. I don't know if the average resident on NYC benefits much from living near a cargo port. But there are significant benefits to living in coastal areas: water has a moderating effect on climate, provides either natural sewage outfall (or fresh water, depending), and brings in tourists. It's not a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of cities exist on sea or lake coasts, followed by navigable rivers, and that there aren't all that many choice locations left.
woodruffw 2y ago
Why would a new city preclude maintaining our existing ones? I don't necessarily disagree about building new cities, but I don't understand how that would solve the problem here: NYC is still the financial and entertainment capital of the world, and it's not like we can just let it decay. People live and stay here for a reason.
- maxwell 2y ago
  What if the infrastructure is (economically) unmaintainable? Ancient Rome had a million people at the turn of the 1st century and was the financial and entertainment capital of the world too. People lived and stayed there too, until they didn't. How many steam systems are left in the U.S. (outside college campuses)?
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    I don't think comparing Ancient Rome with NYC makes for a serious comparison, except in the broadest strokes. As for the steam system: it's an integral part of Manhattan's residential and commercial heating system. My understanding is that it pays for itself in charges to apartment buildings and businesses (including hospitals as mentioned), so there's no current question around its financial sustainability.
    - maxwell 2y ago
      Comparing cities doesn't makes for a serious comparison...? It sounds like the steam system is important because it's important? Do you have any numbers beyond idioms and anecdotes? At what point in the maintenance curve will the steam system become unprofitable? And to be clear, I love the NYC steam system, but for romantic reasons, not economic.
      - woodruffw 2y ago
        > Comparing cities doesn't makes for a serious comparison...? No; comparing antiquity Rome (a city whose collapse is a subject of ongoing historical debate) to NYC (a city that was built 2600 years later) does not make for a serious comparison. Better comparisons would be present-day Tokyo, London, Moscow, Paris, etc. These cities have similar infrastructural problems that they've been able to solve in ways that NYC hasn't, sometimes for political or historical reasons (e.g. being bombed so thoroughly that building new infrastructure is the only reasonable option). > And to be clear, I love the NYC steam system, but for romantic reasons, not economic. I don't love it, or hate it. I recognize that it's a piece of infrastructure, and that infrastructure comes with assumptions. You can either pay to maintain those assumptions, or pay to upend them. Either way, you pay. With NYC paying to maintain them is frequently optimal, since upending them requires revisiting other, even more costly assumptions. For NYC's steam system, concretely: there's been no real public noise from ConEd about the system's unmaintainability or unsustainability. They recently agreed to a new rate/fee schedule with the state PSC[1], on which I can find no significant controversial reporting. Edit: to make it more clear: ConEd's steam network provides heating and industrial steam to around 1500 buildings in Manhattan. That's 1500 buildings, most of which are near or over a century old, that would need to have steam boilers retrofitted into their basements (or have their entire steam plumbing ripped out and replaced with something else). That's a lot of time and money in already one of the world's most expensive labor markets. [1]: https://dps.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/11/pr23116.pdf https://dps.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/11/pr23116.pd...

alexpotato 2y ago

> is that they’re (1) undocumented As a sibling poster mentioned, undocumented infra is horrible. I wrote a thread on how to improve documentation in general if people are interested: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224309861304938496.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1224309861304938496.html It's from the perspective of FinTech SRE but I tried to make it general for folks in other industries.